OS X El Capitan: Parental Controls NOT working

I'm facing similar problems and I am really disappointed, as the parental controls was my argument "against" my wife to buy a much more expensive Mac for our 9yrs old.

Limiting apps seems to work, but checking or unchecking them in the parental control settings has no effect. Once app limiting is checked, I have to log in as my son and start each app once. On the first start it asks, wether app is allowed to be run always. I can confirm this with my admin password, works.

But a real mess is the web page filter. I want to restrict web access to the pages I have specified. At the same time I want my son to have access to the family Apple Music account and AppStore purchases. But if I open iTunes or the AppStore it seems, that these "apps" are nothing more than customized Safari views, because they inform me, that some Apple websites (e.g. https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/blablah) cannot be opened due to parental restrictions. And worse: It's not sufficient to add https://itunes.apple.com, because the whole URL needs to be explicitly allowed, including variables.

Is there any known workaround to activate restricted web access without breaking iTunes and the AppStore?

same here on a new iMac: no way to customise Parental Controls, settings keep reverting to default :rolleyes:

glad to see it wasn't me doing something silly 😝

Mac OS 10.11 and iOS 9.0 are the greatest catastrophes I've seen in 20+ years using Macs: bravo Apple!!! :mad:

W4RH34D

you mentioned you want all the way to engineering." Are they working on this, is here a time frame?

As some one you mentioned, I spent a LOT more $ on a Mac partly because their parental controls are inherent in the OS code. If I would have known all the issues with this feature I would have waited to upgrade until this feature was working properly.

FYI - the Parental controls on iOS (iPhone and iPad) work fine.

Thnx

Does apple not respond to posts here? I am considering returning the two macbooks I just bought because of this - what's the solution?

Actually, no. Maybe you should really return the macbooks, because I don't see it fixed in the near future.

maxslade wrote:

Does apple not respond to posts here? I am considering returning the two macbooks I just bought because of this - what's the solution?

No, Apple does not respond to anything here. This is strictly a user-to-user community. Your options are to send Apple feedback at http://www.apple.com/feedback, book a Genius Bar appointment, or outright return the computers.

Has anybody else contacted Apple or left feedback about this? It would be more helpful if we all wrote to them than if it was just me! Thank you!🙂

So, you are saying this forum is just useless for pointing out issues etc? Its just for inter-user-communication? Like a apple hosted chat? This does´t make much sense to me though. What is this for?

Heading over to feedback link, giving feedback.

Thanks for the info. Otherwise I would have sat here until I am hundred.

We're all mad about this sure, but let's not get carried away. These forums are very useful. Isn't it nice when you yahoo a question there's a chance it has been answered in here? At least you know that it isn't just you and you spend weeks spinning your wheels going no where.

I think if nothing else, this is a good place to encourage other Apple users to leave feedback to Apple. I have many Macs, but the Parental controls issue is only present in El Capitan. apple.com/feedback !

iachelini wrote:

So, you are saying this forum is just useless for pointing out issues etc? Its just for inter-user-communication? Like a apple hosted chat? This does´t make much sense to me though. What is this for?

Heading over to feedback link, giving feedback.

Thanks for the info. Otherwise I would have sat here until I am hundred.

No, it's not useless. We help a lot of people here that need it, help they might not otherwise get. Just because Apple as a company doesn't read these forums or respond to anything posted on them doesn't mean we're all wasting our time around here. None of us are paid to post here, we do so out of the goodness of our hearts because we want to help people having problems with their computers. If we can't help you, we direct you to where we think you can get help. This is a support community. We provide support for Apple users.

Just because you're not getting the answers you're looking for doesn't mean you can go around ******* on the help we provide other people.

I didn't meant to be disrespectful or anything like that. Maybe the tone in the posting was a bit too rude. Sorry for that.

It wasn't against the people helping other out, rather the fact that something useful like this is ignored by the company which is hosting it.

Also, I thanked OP for the hint to the feedback form (which I used).

What's the myth here is the fact that a regression test between the old and new release never has happened and thats quite unbelievable for a company like Apple. There hasn't been one single check, whether a built in feature still works or not. According to the fact, that its so easily reproducible, I would even go that far, that there hasn't been even a smoke test by someone.

I too have a similar issue. Mine is more about allowing access than restricting it though.

My daughter needs to use Google Classroom and access documents on Google Drive. She was doing this successfully with Yosemite. I updated to El Cap over the weekend and now it's a no go. Safari balks at Google Drive as a "restricted" site and when I enter my Admin password, the site remains restricted. I have checked the list of allowed websites under parental controls and the URL is there, but it just won't allow safari to access it.

There was a similar problem to this one in OS X 10.8 (whatever cat that was), but cnet's solution for that bug doesn't work for me here, unfortunately. More and more I find myself consulting these forums in spite of their claims that "it just works." Sorry, not so much.

DirtyDawg wrote:

I too have a similar issue. Mine is more about allowing access than restricting it though.

My daughter needs to use Google Classroom and access documents on Google Drive. She was doing this successfully with Yosemite. I updated to El Cap over the weekend and now it's a no go. Safari balks at Google Drive as a "restricted" site and when I enter my Admin password, the site remains restricted. I have checked the list of allowed websites under parental controls and the URL is there, but it just won't allow safari to access it.

There was a similar problem to this one in OS X 10.8 (whatever cat that was), but cnet's solution for that bug doesn't work for me here, unfortunately. More and more I find myself consulting these forums in spite of their claims that "it just works." Sorry, not so much.

I would avoid downloading anything from cnet. Aggregate download sites like that one and Softonic many times are repositories for malware/adware, which can do considerable damage to your system. Download only from either the app store or the developer's website.

You misunderstand. I haven't downloaded anything from cnet, nor do I intend to. However, I'm probably not going to get malware from following a manual fix procedure on my own machine. There is an article on cnet (here: http://www.cnet.com/news/fixing-parental-controls-problem-in-os-x-10-8-2/) which outlines the similar problem I mentioned in 10.8.2, as well as some potential remedies. These did not resolve my issue however.